Teachers’ and Learners’ Engagement in Online Classroom Interaction

The use of technology, specifically videoconferencing software, to deliver L2 lessons shapes synchronous online L2 interactions into a distinct form with its own unique patterns and characteristics. This chapter illustrates that learners’ and teachers’ online engagement and interaction language discourses display these unique characteristics. Specifically, the chapter first outlines the distinctive features of synchronous online L2 classroom and demonstrates how these features influence both classroom configurations and L2 learning opportunities. It then provides a detailed description of typical types of synchronous online L2 classroom interactions, using excerpts from original primary data and existing L2 research to illustrate how learners’ and teachers’ engagement behaviours facilitate interactions conductive for L2 learning. The chapter concludes with an argument that synchronous online learner engagement (SOLE) is uniquely shaped by the characteristics of synchronous online L2 learning environments and thus investigating SOLE needs to be linked to these characteristics of technology-mediated learning settings.